Geri Howell, a friend of Alma H. Boyce, greets him at his home in Salt Lake City on his 100th birthday, Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012.

Ravell Call, Deseret News

Summary

Alma H. Boyce celebrated his 100th birthday Tuesday with family and close friends at an open house in his backyard.

SALT LAKE CITY — Maybe it's his daily breakfast of oatmeal mush.

Or his morning walk. Or a love of reading and interest in the news of the day.

"I try not to miss my afternoon nap. That's when you recharge," said Alma H. Boyce, who celebrated his 100th birthday Tuesday with family and close friends at an open house in his backyard.

Turning 100, he said, isn't much different from turning 99.

"If someone told you when you were young that you'd live to be 100, you would think they flipped out," Boyce said.

His priorities have been service to others, his church, his country and a deep devotion to his wife, Jean Bradshaw Boyce, and family, family members say. The couple was married nearly 64 years when Jean died six years ago.

Boyce, who has macular degeneration, rode the bus daily to Brighton Gardens to visit his wife the final months of her life.

"She was, without a doubt, the best thing that came into my life," he said.

The couple had four children, David, Carolyn, Barbara and Steven. Steven died in 1997, which Boyce said was one of the more difficult points of his life.

"You can't live this long without having some difficult things happen to you or hurt you or have things you wish you could have avoided," he said.

For the most part, Boyce enjoyed many happy years with his family and enjoyed his work as an attorney specializing in property law. Boyce was a partner in a firm whose principal client was American Savings and Loan. He practiced law well into his 80s.

While taking the five-day exam to become a member of the Utah Bar was akin to "torture," Boyce said he made a career in law because he "felt it was an opportunity to do good."

Besides, he joked, "I wasn't bright enough to be a doctor."

Boyce grew up on Canyon Road, one of six children. As small boy, he liked to walk to the state Capitol and "ride" the concrete lions that stood guard at the building entrances.

"That was a majestic building to go into," he said.

Boyce also would ride his sled down A Street. He recalled one trip that came to an abrupt stop when he and his sleigh ended up under a horse-drawn coal cart.

Another fond childhood memory was learning that his elementary school, Lafayette School, had been destroyed by fire. It seemed like good fortune to the young boy.

"I knew when the school burned down that I was a free man," he said.

That feeling lasted until he figured out that he and his classmates would have to make up the lost instructional time.

As a young man, Boyce worked a number of jobs to pay for college and a mission to England for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early 1930s. One of his jobs was working as a carhop and waiter at Salt Lake City's "Coon Chicken Inn," Boyce said, wincing at name of the establishment.

Boyce served in the same mission as former LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley. While the men were not mission companions, they became lifelong friends. They were among a group of returned missionaries that called themselves the Windsor Club. The men and their wives met regularly for some 60 years.

The Boyce family's attachment to the United Kingdom is "deep-seated and real." Four generations of Boyce men served church missions there, he said.